The City of Providence, Rhode Island, will start delivering new, standardized trash and recycling collection carts to residents to help divert recyclables from landfills and create new materials with recycled content. These collection carts will replace aging and inconsistent containers and lay the foundation for a stronger, more effective recycling system citywide. The recycling effort is supported by a $7.4 million investment from Closed Loop Partners, American Beverage Association and other major brands, The Recycling Partnership, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Solid Waste Infrastructure for Recycling (SWIFR) Grant Program.
The new carts are a major step in a multi-year public-private partnership to address longstanding challenges in Providence’s recycling system. By aligning public funding, private investments, infrastructure upgrades and resident education, the project is taking direct action to reduce contamination, strengthen recycling operations, and deliver measurable recycling rate improvements citywide. Providence’s current contamination rate is over 47 percent, resulting in over 8,000 tons of valuable materials intended for recycling being rejected and sent to landfills annually instead of being made into new products. That is equivalent to approximately 288 pounds of valuable materials lost to landfill per household.
Contributing to the multi-million dollar project, circular-economy focused firm Closed Loop Partners provided a commitment of over $5 million in financing from its Catalytic Capital & Private Credit group, including its beverage strategy, backed by the American Beverage’s Every Bottle Back Initiative, in partnership with Rhode Island’s beverage companies, and its infrastructure strategy, backed by Amazon, The Coca-Cola Company, Colgate-Palmolive, Danone North America, Kenvue, Keurig Dr Pepper, P&G, PepsiCo, Primo Brands, Starbucks, Unilever, the Venn Foundation and the Walmart Foundation. Additionally, the city secured two grants including $625,000 from The Recycling Partnership, with funding through the Every Bottle Back Initiative, and an additional $1.8 million through the EPA’s SWIFR grant program, which supports improvements of post-consumer materials management and infrastructure. Together these investments aim to improve Providence’s recycling rate of 2.4 percent, currently the lowest in Rhode Island.
Published May 2026
